Japanese Police Arrests 18-Year Old Hacker for Stealing $134,000 in Monacoin

Japanese Police Arrests 18-Year Old Hacker for Stealing $134,000 in Monacoin

Japanese Police Arrests 18-Year Old Hacker for Stealing $134,000 in Monacoin

Local prosecutors in Japan have charged an 18-year old male with cryptocurrency theft. | Source: Shutterstock

Local prosecutors in Japan have charged an 18-year old male with cryptocurrency theft. Per a report published in a local news outlet, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of Japan are accusing the young adult of stealing 15 million Yen ($134,310) worth of stealing MonaCoin (MONA)—a Litecoin hard fork.

According to the report, this is the first time local authorities have charged a hacker for crypto theft in Japan. The young hacker is accused of breaching Monappy, an online wallet service used by crypto investors to store their digital assets last year.

Join CCN for $9.99 per month and get an ad-free version of CCN including discounts for future events and services. Support our journalists today. Click here to sign up.

The teenager reportedly took advantage of the website’s vulnerability, thanks to glitches related to access overloads. Primarily, he sent repeated transfers requests to himself over a short period and overwhelmed the system into overloading.

Once he overwhelmed the servers, his balance increased rapidly due to the consistency of his actions. On realizing that his account had been bumped up to the amount he desired, he transferred the cryptocurrency to a third party wallet service, exchanged them for popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and cashed them into fiat.

The suspect was eventually arrested, and during his questioning, he was quoted saying, “I felt as if I’d found a secret trick and thought I would take out all of the MonaCoin.”

Tor: The Perfect Tool for Crypto Hackers

The Tor browser was developed as a security tool for the United States military for secure and confidential communication.